Genji Monogatari

The fifth print in Saito Kaoru's ten-volume mezzotint cycle on The Tale of Genji (1982–1991), this work continues his sustained engagement with Murasaki Shikibu's Heian-period novel. Catalogued as etching, the print belongs to the broader intaglio family but is executed in the mezzotint manner Saito made his own — the surface of the copper plate rocked into a uniformly burred ground, then burnished with degrees of pressure to release tones ranging from absolute black to faint pearl. The technique suits the world of the Genji, in which much of the action unfolds at night, behind kichō screens, or in the half-light of moon-lit gardens. Saito's compositions tend to crop tightly, isolating a single figure or a narrow compositional incident rather than depicting events in panoramic narrative form. His project parallels that of Hamaguchi Yozo, the other Japanese master who built an international reputation on the mezzotint, though Saito's subjects remain rooted in classical Japanese literature rather than the still life.